


how to be considerate to your partner without bringing home a dead body

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Diners, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-14 00:30:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2171139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After all, S.H.I.E.L.D. has countless handbooks on appropriate office protocol and how to handle the delegation of assignments - but as far as she’s aware, there’s no instruction manual that includes a section on “how to be considerate to your partner without bringing home a dead body.” </p><p>(Or, the story in which Natasha tries to understand American culture the only way Clint would want her to.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	how to be considerate to your partner without bringing home a dead body

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



> Inspired by the following from the _be_compromised_ promptathon: **Natasha doesn't know what kind of food she likes because she's spent her whole life eating whatever was appropriate to the job, so Clint makes it a mission to take her to every kind of restaurant, diner, and ethnic place to try it all (early SHIELD.)**
> 
> Admittedly, I ended up straying a bit, but, well. I'm a sucker for diner food.
> 
> Thanks to [bobsessive](http://bobsessive.tumblr.com) for assuring me this worked. Also, I love cheese fries. So does Clint. Deal with it.

“Waffles,” says Natasha.

“Onion rings,” says Clint.

“Omelets,” says Natasha.

“Cheese fries,” says Clint.

“Will you two cut it out?” Hill growls through both of their comms. “I’m trying to get a read on your location.”

Natasha crosses her arms over her chest as Clint finds her eyes, his face imploring as he attempts to continue the now-silent debate.

“Cheese fries,” Clint mutters and he can’t tell if the pain in his side is from Natasha’s fist or the fact that he knows he’s bruised at least two ribs.

 

***

 

So. Cheese fries.

It’s their first official meal together as agent and agent, partner and partner, and while Clint thinks there’s a possibility she could still spike his coffee or stick a dagger into his back when he turns around to ask for the check, he’s somehow feeling impossibly good about his survival odds.

“Do you take all your new partners out for greasy diner food?” Natasha asks sullenly as she picks up a fry, pinching it between two fingers as if it’s a bug.

“Only the best ones,” Clint says, shoving the plate closer. “And come on, you’re barely eating.”

Natasha makes a face. “They’re disgusting,” she says bluntly, sticking the fry in her mouth. “As are your food choices.”

Clint laughs before wincing at the pain that the reaction causes to his still-healing injuries. “Sticks and stones, Natasha.” He fights off the discomfort to grab a napkin.

“Besides, you can’t go wrong with cheese fries.”

 

***

 

As it turns out, Nicholas J. Fury doesn’t like cheese fries. Natasha decides this when they get back to headquarters and Clint’s called in for a short briefing no less than ten minutes after starting to unload his gear. Natasha is still struggling to learn about how things run at S.H.I.E.L.D., but she’s not dumb. She knows a tightly closed door with a director-level individual means either a promotion or a scolding, and she also she knows that Clint isn’t exactly due for the former, considering his recent decisions in the field.

“Did we do something wrong?” she asks when he returns to the room, and Clint shakes his head silently. It’s different, and it’s not what she’s come to expect from his brash and sarcastic personality, and she frowns.

“Does he not like cheese fries?”

“I – what?” Clint turns around, a handful of arrows in one hand, and Natasha catches the dark red still sticking to one of the tips. She tries to ignore it, keeping her eyes on his face.

“Does the Director not like cheese fries?” she repeats slowly, as if she’s trying to understand the question herself. It takes awhile, but eventually there’s a change in Clint’s eyes, and the lines around his mouth crinkle slightly while the ones on his forehead grow a little more.

“No,” he says finally, his shoulders dropping, the tension seemingly draining from his body. “No. He doesn’t like cheese fries.”

 

***

 

There’s no rule in the handbook that says S.H.I.E.L.D. agents have to eat in the cafeteria or from the cafeteria at all, but Natasha makes it a habit to break the regulation anyway once she has more than a few bites of the things that people seem to think classify as “food.” She never had good food in the Red Room – she sometimes never had any food at all – but she always imagined that when she finally got to lead some semblance of a normal life outside of electrocutions and knife fights, the cooking would taste a little less like cardboard.

“You okay?” Clint asks when he finds her hiding out in one of the larger vents near their quarters. He tilts his head quizzically to one side as he watches her take a delicate bite out of a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

“Yes,” she says carefully, not bothering to ask how he knew where to find her. “Why?”

“Well, the vents are usually my hiding spot,” he replies, sliding in and placing his collapsible bow next to him. He nudges her shoulder.

“Where’d you get the sandwich?”

Natasha shrugs. “Stole it from Sitwell’s lunch bag when he wasn’t looking,” she answers without emotion. “The cafeteria stuff was gross.”

Clint sighs but there’s a difference, Natasha is beginning to realize, between an exasperated sigh and an amused sigh. This is definitely the latter, and so she tempers her reaction carefully.

“You can’t just steal people’s lunch around here,” Clint says gently. “That’s not how it works. You’ll get in trouble.”

“So?” Natasha asks, taking another bite of the sandwich. Clint swallows.

“So, that’s not how it works,” he repeats, his voice still soft. “Not a good start to working your way up the trust ladder with these guys.”

She doesn’t say anything after that, and he nudges her again when he sees her eyes move to the floor.

“Wanna go to the diner?”

Natasha gives him a look. “You’re joking.”

Clint shakes his head. “No, I’m not.”

“We have a meeting in an hour,” she points out as Clint gets up, looking unconcerned.

“So? They know me there. I can have them put an order together and we can be out the door before people even get seated. Trust me. You can have a burger and it’ll be ten times better than Sitwell’s shitty sandwich.”

Natasha eyes him warily but unfolds her legs, getting up and following him as he crawls out of the vent. True to form, they’re back ten minutes before their scheduled briefing, though Clint is still sneaking onion rings from a small plastic container underneath the table, much to Hill’s dismay.

“Told you,” he says under his breath, and even though Natasha’s face remains impassive, there’s a twitching muscle in her cheek that she can’t quite control.

When she gets back to her room, there’s a paper bag sitting on her bed, and she unearths its contents to find a full loaf of bread, a few packages of cheese, and two containers of cold cuts.

There’s also a note, written in terrible cursive scribble, that says, “ _thanks for the lunch date – remember what I said about stealing_.”

Natasha folds the note into squares and slips it into her pocket before she can think otherwise.

 

***

 

It’s not Natasha’s fault that Clint winds up in Medical. It’s not even Clint’s fault that Clint winds up in Medical, though in hindsight, Natasha thinks this might have been easier if it was either of them as opposed to a rogue bullet from a sniper that went unnoticed until it was too late. At least then she figures she might be able to joke about it rather than feeling anxiously sick while helping to load his stretcher into the quinjet, watching the way the blood leaks from his body, more of it staining her hands and darkening her suit.

She waits until he’s given the all clear from surgery before leaving the premises. The drugs should hold out for more than a few hours, she knows: a mental reassurance to herself that fifteen minutes away isn’t going to make all that much of a difference.

At the diner, she hesitates before walking in. It’s the first time she’s willingly been here without Clint, and if she’s being honest, the whole thing feels a little strange - and quite frankly, a little intimidating.

“Just one?” The cheery woman at the front desk asks when Natasha finally enters, and she shakes her head, pointing to the sign over the bar that simply says “take-out.” She grabs an oversized menu and peruses the offerings, feeling suddenly overwhelmed by the options in the absence of not having Clint next to her to make a joke or point out a recommendation.

She finds her eyes wandering to the open kitchen, her mind fixating on the frying pans she can see being flipped and the silver knives that are being used to chop vegetables. _Amateurs_ , Natasha thinks sullenly, feeling a hint of adrenaline at the idea of grabbing one of the knives before remembering that she’s supposed to be normal now. Normal people apparently go to 24-hour diners and order meals larger than anything Natasha has ever seen in her life, and normal people do not think about ways that cookware can be used to kill people.

She tears her gaze away from the scene, focusing instead on what she knows – the portion of the menu that says “side dishes” – and after a bit of deliberation, picks something that looks suspiciously interesting and also like something that Clint would probably enjoy, because the description in small type underneath the title makes absolutely no sense. When she returns to Medical, she’s relieved to find that he’s still unconscious and that she hasn’t missed him waking up after all.

Natasha puts the bag down on the bedside table and curls up in the chair next to him, cracking open a book in an attempt to try to keep her mind off the events of the past few hours.

“Did you shoot me?”

She startles when he finally wakes at least another hour later, swinging her legs off the chair and tossing her book to the floor.

“I wish,” she replies, watching him struggle to open his eyes. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be okay.”

“There’s a relief,” he mutters bitterly, pain shadowing his face as he tries to move. He turns his head to the side, and she watches him take in the dripping IV line and the bag next to the bed.

“Whatccha get me?”

Natasha sighs, her hands moving to the bag, uncovering its contents. “I know you can’t eat it yet, but I just…thought you might like it.” She takes off the white plate covering the aluminum bowl and Clint immediately perks, craning his head as the smell of the meal permeates the sterile hospital room.

“You’re kidding me. _Disco fries_?”

“Is that what these are? They sounded disgusting, so I just figured you probably ate them.”

Clint smiles. “I may be drugged, but I recognize disco fries when I see them. How did you know?”

Natasha hesitates, re-covering the plate and putting it back in the bag. “It was a lucky guess,” she says slowly. “Like I said. It looked gross.” She feels his eyes following her as she continues to avoid his gaze, fussing with the blankets around his middle where she knows he has the most bandages, and when she pulls back, he’s looking at her with something akin to amusement.

“You know, you didn’t have to bring me anything,” he says after a beat. “Honestly, you should probably get used to me ending up here if we continue to work together.”

“Everyone else has things,” Natasha replies bluntly, remembering her first taste of Medical when she wasn’t a patient, remembering how she had seen most rooms adorned with cards and balloons and more than a few visitors. Clint wasn’t like that, though; he wasn’t really made for balloons or cheesy cards, and working mostly alone meant that he didn’t have a lot of interpersonal relationships outside of his superiors.

Natasha watches his reaction, immediately feeling like she’s made a bad call, like all this time she’s spent reading him has been for nothing and she’s got it wrong. After all, S.H.I.E.L.D. has countless handbooks on appropriate office protocol and how to handle the delegation of assignments - but as far as she’s aware, there’s no instruction manual that includes a section on “how to be considerate to your partner without bringing home a dead body.”

“I just – I thought it would be nice?”

Clint reaches for her hand as much as he can given his position and she takes it without thinking, running her thumb carefully over the back of his palm.

“It is,” he says, and underneath the slurred speech she recognizes his genuine tone. “Thanks.”

Natasha nods. “You’re welcome,” she says quietly, relaxing a little as she sinks down next to him on the bed.

 

***

 

Natasha’s been sitting at the apartment with her legs up on the kitchen table for at least fifteen minutes before Clint walks through the door, kicking his boots across the floor in annoyance.

“What’s got you all worked up?” she asks when he only makes a grunting noise in an attempt to say hi.

“New Mexico,” he says, heading to the fridge and grabbing a beer from the top shelf. “You?”

“Russia,” she answers emotionlessly, lifting her feet and turning to face him. Clint swallows down a mouthful of beer and makes a face.

“Guess they figure Delta can do two jobs at once.”

Natasha sighs, pushing back her hair. “It’s temporary. There’s a lot going on – I know you don’t pay attention in meetings anymore but have you seen Fury this week? He looks like his head’s going to explode.”

“And that’s different from any other day?” Clint asks moodily. Natasha crosses her arms, pausing as she watches him skulk into the living room.

“They’re routine missions,” she says after a moment, following him out of the kitchen. “What, are you worried New Mexico won’t have shitty diner food or something?”

“It doesn’t,” he replies sullenly, and she’s not entirely surprised he’s taken her half-joking question seriously. “I know. I’ve looked.”

“Well, then, I’m sorry.” She knows she doesn’t sound sorry at all, and Clint glares as he dumps himself onto the armrest of the couch. Natasha sinks down next to him and takes his free hand in her own, finding his eyes.

“How about we make a deal?”

“I thought you hated making deals with me,” Clint says moodily, and Natasha rolls her eyes because she knows he only deflects when he doesn’t want to be serious about something.

“You go to New Mexico. I’ll go to Russia. We’re both back before the week is over, I promise.” She squeezes his fingers. “If one of us is late, the other gets to buy and it’s whatever we want.”

That earns both a smirk and an eyebrow raise. “Whatever we want?”

“Yes,” Natasha replies, and when she sees the lopsided grin appear she almost regrets opening her mouth at all. “And I’m going to tell you right now that if it’s a week’s worth of soggy, gravy-soaked fries, I reserve the right to kill you.”

“Sticks and stones, Natasha.” He smirks again, clearly amused. “Did you ever think you’d be making deals with me based on diner food?”

(She wants to tell him that the only deal she thought she’d ever be making with him was a bargain for her life, but she decides better of it.)

 

***

 

Natasha leaves two days later, and when Clint returns to his apartment after his own briefing, he opens the fridge to find a brown paper bag with his name on it sitting on the top shelf. There’s a note taped to the outside, and he rips it off before he bothers to open the package.

_“thanks for the recommendation – remember what I said about coming home.”_

He pockets the note, takes a cheese fry from the bag, and smiles.


End file.
